In metabolism-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), high-fat diet-induced HO-1 overexpression can promote tumor cell ferroptosis through iron ion release, while HO-1 can also reduce liver damage by inhibiting the NF-κB pathway in a chronic inflammatory environment (Luo et al., 2022; Zheng et al., 2023). Here, HMOX1 is linked to neoplasm.